Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) agreed to acquire AutoNavi Holdings Ltd (高德地圖) in a deal that values the Chinese company at US$1.5 billion, bolstering its Internet mapping tools ahead of a possible initial public offering (IPO).
AutoNavi shareholders will receive US$21 in cash for each American depositary receipt, the companies said on Friday in a statement, the same terms that Alibaba originally offered in February.
The bid is a 27 percent premium to AutoNavi’s closing price on Feb. 7, before the offer was first disclosed.
AutoNavi will give Alibaba control of China’s most popular mobile mapping service as the nation’s largest e-commerce company prepares for an IPO in New York as soon as this month.
Alibaba is trying to win a big portion of China’s 618 million Internet users with more services, and AutoNavi lets it compete directly with Baidu Inc’s (百度) Baidu Maps and with Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) for taxi and restaurant recommendation services.
With its looming IPO, Alibaba is moving rapidly to bolster its reach with investments in China and abroad.
Earlier this month, the company was part of a US$250 million funding round for ride-sharing application Lyft Inc and last month Alibaba said it would invest almost US$700 million in Intime Retail Group Co (銀泰集團), owner of department stores and supermarkets.
Beijing-based AutoNavi, which is already 28 percent owned by Alibaba, has digital-map databases covering about 3.6 million kilometers of roads and more than 20 million “points of interest” across China. The deal is expected to be completed in the third quarter.
AutoNavi shareholders still need to vote on the takeover.
Mapping is becoming a vital battleground for the largest technology providers in the world with companies such as Google Inc and Apple Inc stepping up investments. Last year, Google acquired Waze, which help users navigate traffic with smartphones, for almost US$1 billion.
Apple, a newer player to the market, has made several acquisitions to improve its services, including deals for Locationary, HopStop and Embark.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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